17,000 bridges have gone without inspection

for two years.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20998261/
<snip>
In fact, at least 17,000 bridges in the U.S. went more than two years between safety inspections, according to federal records analyzed by msnbc.com. These newly released records from the National Bridge Inventory include inspections through 2006. Although Congress in 1971 ordered rigorous standards for inspecting bridges every 24 months, the records reveal a system in which the buck is passed down from federal to state to local governments, without penalty for those that fail to protect the public.

Bridges reported past two years since their last inspection include the obscure, crossing the Dangerous River in Alaska and Bayou Funny Louis in Louisiana, and the heavily traveled, carrying traffic on Interstate 5 in Los Angeles and Cicero Avenue in Chicago.

Fame is no guarantee of an on-time inspection. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is being checked now, nearly a year behind schedule.

The bridges reported missing a two-year inspection include 1,411 on interstate highways. That's three out of every hundred freeway bridges.

Take a drive across America on Interstate 40 from Barstow, Calif., to Wilmington, N.C., and you'll cross 2,563 bridges — including at least 167 that went more than two years between checkups.

Check your bridge
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21840954/

That's one category of jobs where we can begin to hire if Congress will fund it.

Bridge inspector trainers, too.

We need to look at everything that needs doing and HIRE PEOPLE. No more rate cuts. Just JOBS.

Maybe we could have a national program encouraging volunteers to go around teaching Americans how to swim.

In stead of the "Duck and Cover!" program, we can have "Jump and Swim!"

takes on a whole new meaning after reading this report. WTF!!!

We bought these nice shiny wars a few years ago. They're kind of beat up now, dinged and dirty, and nobody really wants to play with them anymore, but they're going to cost us several hundred billion dollars a year, every year, for the foreseeable future.

They don't want to balance the budget, pay teachers, lift the military families out of poverty, feed children, make social security solvent, you name it, if they have to pay for it.

starving Government? Bankrupting it by massive spending along with taxcuts (re. Iraq War) works twice as fast.

for Grover.

For Fiscal Year 2008, the US is budgeting 623 billion dollars for military expenditures. In contrast, for example, the US government spent roughly 56 billion for the Dept. of Education in 2005.

Dept. of Education:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/education.html

World military expenditures:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm

War is pretty profitable for defense corporations. Building bridges isn't.

This is absolute madness. Where are the Dems? Where are the candidates?

the States are not living up to their responsbilities to maintain the infrastructure in their respective state.

The Federal government has to provide funds.

The transportation Bill passed by Congress and signed by the President came to close to 350 Billion dollars (If I remember correctly). Some of this is appropriated for new construction, some is block grant to be spent at state discretion. Bet maintenance and inspection falls low on the bottom for spending of the block money. Also it is a states responsibility to inspect those bridges. The Feds help fund construction. Once construction is complete they become a State responsibility. States are reluctent to levi taxes if they think they can foist the burden to the Feds.

When I said the Dems should not pass the stimulus package without money for infrastructural repair, I was told that this is urgent.
As Herbert points out
<snip>
Time and again an economic boom has followed periods of sustained infrastructure improvement. It’s impossible to calculate all of the benefits from (to mention just a few) the Erie Canal, which connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and helped make New York America’s premier city; the rural electrification program and other capital improvements of the New Deal; the interstate highway program of the Eisenhower administration.

The tremendous costs and vast reach of today’s infrastructure requirements means that the federal government has to take a leadership role. It’s inevitable. The only question is when.

“At a time when we’re worried about rising unemployment rates and declining confidence in this country, infrastructure projects have the dual effect of putting people to work — and usually at pretty good salaries and wages — while also creating a sense of optimism, of investing in the future...In terms of stimulating the economy, there is nothing better than a job...”

program to move the economy come January 2009.

This is important

That's an issue that's been neglected for far too long.